


new normal

by kira_katrine



Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Friendship, Gen, Sharing a Body
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2020-12-28 01:42:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21128708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kira_katrine/pseuds/kira_katrine
Summary: May could come back to the human world with Tilly, but only by continuing to share Tilly's body. Tilly agreed to this, though she's not always sure why.





	new normal

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Shadaras](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadaras/gifts).

“What is that thing?”

Tilly was trying to make herself get used to the voice in her head. She was the one who had chosen to let May stay there, after all, and she was going to have to learn to live with it. And figure out what to do when May decided she wanted to talk to Tilly while Tilly was in the middle of the mess hall at the height of the lunch hour.

“Why do you always get all your food from that… box thing?” May asked again.

“It’s a food synthesizer,” Tilly tried to say without moving her lips. “It makes food, it uses matter-energy conversion, you can program it to do all kinds of--”

“What kind of _ food _ is that?” The green juice and burrito Tilly was holding looked _ really weird _ all of a sudden. Like it was shifting somehow, different parts that looked the same on the surface turning colors Tilly had never heard of because she wasn’t the one looking at it-- _ trying to see it for its constituent parts, what kind of matter this was anyway, was it as unnatural as you made it sound, was it even fit for-- _

“Tilly, are you okay?” Michael asked.

“What?” 

“You were giving that juice a funny look just now.”

“Oh. I’m just. Uh, not super hungry right now.”

“You’re sure? You know it is important to eat regular meals if you want to perform at your best.”

“Yeah. I’m fine. Totally fine. I’ll just eat later, it’s fine,” Tilly said, though her stomach told a different story. Michael raised an eyebrow. 

“...I’m just having a bit of an argument,” she said. Michael knew about May, after all. She could tell Michael whatever was going on, even if Tilly didn’t want it getting out to everyone in Starfleet. Or her mother.

Michael looked confused for a moment, then nodded. “With--”

“Yeah,” Tilly said. “So, uh, could you watch my food for a bit?” She set her tray down on a nearby table, then quickly walked out of the room.

She was _ not _cut out to be a ventriloquist.

“The synthesizer basically does the same thing you guys did in the network, I think,” Tilly said, having had the time to think about it a little more on the way to the restroom. No one else was there, but she’d shut herself in one of the stalls just in case.

“Explain.”

“You can put garbage and bits of old food and other stuff into it, right? And it makes it into new food.” And it actually sounded pretty weird to Tilly when she put it like that. “Just like fungi break down old dead stuff and make it into soil for new things to grow.”

“Hm,” May said. “Perhaps your science is not so different from our own after all.”

* * *

“Okay, so do you remember that time when I was sitting in the center chair on the bridge and you were trying to get my attention and basically started freaking out on me?” Tilly asked.

“Yes, I do remember that. You were not listening to me.”

“Well, you need to listen to me now. Basically, you need to never do anything like that again.”

“I had something important to say, Tilly. There may be times when I have something else I need to tell you. Why are you never willing to hear it?”

“You know that nobody except for me can see or hear you when we talk like this, right? Which means that when you say things to me, and I react, I look like I’m reacting to nothing. Which is not normal for humans to do. So then other people start thinking something’s wrong with me and that is just really not what I need right now, okay?”

“All right,” May said. “So if I use your mouth to speak instead, and they can all hear, that would be better.”

“No! No, that would be worse! Can you just maybe stay quiet, or at least kind of quiet-ish, when there are other people around? Especially the captain? You know which one the captain is, right?” Sure, Captain Pike already knew about May’s presence--he had to know, and Tilly wouldn’t have felt right not telling him anyway--but she really wanted to impress him as much as possible and show that none of this was going to interfere with her duties or her ability to captain a starship of her own someday and that letting May stay in the first place had _ not _been a sign of overall bad judgment on Tilly’s part. Which maybe it was.

“Not the pale one with the yellow hair.”

“Not--I mean, you’re right, it’s not him, he knows, it’s fine--I mean the one who usually sits in the--really, all of them when I’m on the bridge would probably be good.”

“Oh,” May said. She looked a bit disappointed. Tilly immediately felt bad.

“It’s not that I don’t like talking to you,” she said. “I really do. But when I’m on duty, I can’t just--I can’t just go talk to my human friends whenever I want about whatever I want either, you know? I have to be professional.”

“You humans like to impress your leaders,” May said.

“I guess,” Tilly said. “You could say that. It is kind of like that.”

Of course, Captain Pike almost certainly was not going to let Tilly keep this secret from everybody forever. It would probably have to be in his official report when they finished with all this Red Angel stuff. What would happen then? Had she really screwed up badly enough that she’d be kicked out of the command program? _ That won’t happen. It can’t happen. I’ve worked my ass off for this. _That didn’t matter. Only the best people got to be Starfleet captains and if Tilly wasn’t one of them--no matter what everyone else thought of her reasons for bringing May back, it felt selfish when she thought about it too much, and not telling everyone for so long would probably just make things worse...

She wasn’t sure how much longer she should even try to keep this from everyone. _ But I sure as heck don’t know how to even begin to tell anybody else about something like this. _

* * *

Tilly flopped backwards onto her bed. She was finally done with her assignments for the command program for the night, had eaten her dinner and drunk… probably too much coffee, she realized. She definitely didn’t feel like she could get to sleep yet.

Sometimes when this happened, she ended up chattering to Michael about science or warp engines or mushrooms or anthropology or whatever they’d done that day, at least until her roommate insisted on going to bed or Tilly finally crashed in the middle of a conversation. But Michael wasn’t in the room; she had left the ship earlier that day to visit her family on Vulcan and hopefully find out what was going on with her brother. So Tilly had no one to talk to and was already starting to get bored just thinking about it--

Wait. That wasn’t true. There was someone.

“Uh, hi, May,” Tilly said.

“I have been here this whole time,” said May. “You do not need to start with a greeting.”

“Right.”

Tilly sat there quietly for a minute. It felt wrong. “So, what do you think? Being on the Discovery so far?”

“It is strange. Too much metal. No trees. People eat only at particular times. Not enough people. Too many humans.”

“Um, okay… are you unhappy here?”

“No. I will adjust eventually.”

“Sure… You know, you can talk to me about it if you want, May--is it weird that I still call you May? Would you prefer something else? Do the JahSepp even have names?”

“You could not pronounce what they called me. May is fine.”

“Did you ever… meet the other May? While you were in the network?”

“And when would I have done that?”

_ Shit, I shouldn’t have asked that, _ Tilly thought. _ Why did I do that, why am I always so-- _“Um, I dunno. Doctor Culber was there, you were sorta there, I guess I thought maybe--”

“The mycelial network is not some kind of collection of dead humans. The monster was a special case--”

“You know, I really wish you’d stop calling him that--”

“--my homeworld was never intended as a resting place or--what is that word you used to use--a _ superhighway _for your kind--”

“--it gets really awkward when I have to go to sickbay for something and--”

“In any case, I know nothing more about the human May Ahearn than you know yourself.”

_ Well, that settles that, _ Tilly thought. _ Guess I’d better think of something else to-- _

“Is that why you brought me back with you?” May asked. “Did you think I could tell you more about--her?”

“No,” Tilly said. It was true--when she’d agreed to let the spore-person who looked like her childhood friend share her body, she hadn’t been thinking that at all. But that wasn’t to say the original May hadn’t been on her mind.

“Why, then?”

Tilly gulped, unsure of what to say. _ How ridiculous is it to think about keeping secrets from the alien spore person you literally let live in your brain, though? _

“Tilly?” May asked.

“You, uh, actually want to know?”

“Yes. Is that so strange? From what you have told me, and what I have seen, this sort of arrangement is highly unusual among your species. Before I took you into the network, you and your shipmates went to great lengths to remove me. What changed, then?”

“I guess it did have to do with the real--the original May. The human one,” Tilly said. “Because she was my friend, sort of? One of those things where neither of us really had anyone else so we just ended up hanging out together. We used to talk all the time, we slept over at each other’s houses, my mother embarrassed me to all hell going on about how I was finally making friends and should be careful not to screw this one up--anyway, you don’t need me to go into all that. The point is, we used to be like that and then--well, when you looked like her I didn’t even recognize her face. I didn’t know she was dead until I was trying to figure out who you were.”

“You forgot,” said May. 

“I guess a part of me always kind of thought she couldn’t really be that great if the only person she could find to hang out with was me? And then I moved away and I figured she’d probably rather make new friends at her own school and not listen to me rambling on about new developments in starship propulsion anymore? Nobody else ever did, at least not back then. And I already knew she deserved better friends who weren’t so awkward and annoying and--sorry, you probably don’t want to hear this either. Anyway, it’s more than that. I know you’re not her and you’re your own person or spore or whatever and I totally respect that and I want to try being friends with you. The person you are. Because you’re really pretty cool now I’ve gotten to know you.”

“I am not sure I have ever had a friend before,” May said. “At least not in the way you speak of it.”

“Really?” said Tilly. She realized she really didn’t know much about what being a spore in the mycelial network was like at all, beyond the little May had told her while they had both been in there.

_ \--what was that--they were all around me, all of them always with me--would have done anything, destroyed anything for each other--what was that--they were always talking, sometimes in voices loud enough to hear, sometimes things that did not need to be heard--that metal thing from the other world, the thing we heard called Discovery--follow the metal Discovery--quite intriguing technology on the Discovery--what will the Discovery do to us--wish we could study it more closely--don’t be ridiculous we must destroy it--it brings the monster--destroy the monster--would destroy anything for each other-- _

And then Tilly was back in her room on her bed, where she’d been all along. 

“What _ was _that?” Tilly asked.

“That was my life,” May said. “You would not be able to perceive it exactly as I did, but I believe it was close.”

“It sounds like you had tons of friends, May,” Tilly said. If anything, she wasn’t sure why May would decide to give all that up.

“And you are here surrounded by other humans,” May said. “Over one hundred humans on this starship, and yet you still chose to keep me with you as well.”

“But you said--well, you sort of suggested that the JahSepp were your family,” Tilly said. “Why did you leave all that, and come here?”

“You left your family,” May said. “You left your entire planet. You came to Discovery. Is that so strange?”

“Well, no,” Tilly said. “Not for humans, anyway. Especially not when your family’s like mine.”

“I want to learn more about your people and your science,” May said. “And I also do think I would like to try being your friend, Tilly.”

Tilly smiled to herself. She still didn’t know much about the JahSepp, and May knew just as little about humans. They would both probably be figuring out the implications of their decision for a long time to come. 

But all they could really ever do was try.


End file.
